About Oliver Prezant
Conductor, composer, violist, and arts educator Oliver Prezant has had a wide-ranging career in the arts. As an educator, he has presented interactive lectures and education programs on opera, orchestral, and chamber music for audiences of all ages for organizations including The Santa Fe Opera, the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival, the National Hispanic Cultural Center, Opera Southwest, Performance Santa Fe, the Tanglewood Association of Volunteers, Road Scholar, and the Guilds of the Santa Fe and San Francisco Opera companies.
He has written and hosted radio shows, preview CDs, and online Prelude Talks for The Santa Fe Opera, and radio shows for the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival.
He has interviewed prominent singers, instrumentalists, composers, and directors, including Patricia Racette, Christine Brewer, Jaime Laredo, Osvaldo Golijov, Kaija Saariaho, Tan Dun, and Peter Sellars. He was featured as one of Road Scholar’s Favorite Instructors, and was one of three instructors, internationally, chosen to create the first online pilot programs for Road Scholar during the Covid pandemic.
Oliver has presented programs on the relationship of visual art and music for the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum, the Albuquerque Museum of Art, the New Mexico Museum of Art, and the Anderson Museum of Contemporary Art in Roswell, New Mexico. He created an interactive education exhibit for the Albuquerque Museum of Art featuring videos that he created and hosted, along with his original piano music, based on selected paintings.
His Discovering the Music of Paintings series features three improvising musicians interpreting audience impressions of selected artwork. Past programs have included the work artwork of Mary Vernon, Nishiki Sugawara-Beda, Carlos Canul, and others.
He was an Assistant Professor in the Contemporary Music Program at the College of Santa Fe and an instructor at Santa Fe University of Art and Design.
He has provided professional development workshops and in-class presentations for teachers from Santa Fe Public Schools, and has been a presenter at the New Mexico Art Education Association Conference. His workshops for instrumentalists and singers are based on an approach that features exploration, discovery, and experiential learning in the areas of musical expression, understanding, performance, and creativity.
He was one of the founding teaching artists in the ArtWorks Program of the Partners in Education Foundation for the Santa Fe Public Schools, a Lincoln Center Institute-inspired program that provides arts education workshops for students and teachers in the areas of music, poetry, visual art, theater, and dance. He also served as the Artistic Advisor to the ArtWorks program for many years, training teaching artists and classroom teachers and coordinating with area poets, museums, and performing arts organizations.
As the Music Director and Conductor of the Santa Fe Community Orchestra for twenty years, he worked with community musicians and choristers, professional soloists, public school music students, and composers from Santa Fe and northern New Mexico to present a wide variety of innovative performances, youth concerts, audience education programs, and community collaborations with museums, arts organizations, and creative artists, and performances of large choral works at venues including the Cathedral Basilica and the main stage of The Santa Fe Opera. His compositions include The Butterfly / La Mariposa for storyteller and orchestra, songs and poems in a variety of genres, and educational pieces for student band and orchestra programs.
As a violist, he performed with numerous ensembles in New York, Los Angeles, and the Santa Fe-Albuquerque area, including the California Chamber Virtuosi, The Santa Fe Opera, and the New Mexico Symphony Orchestra, and he was the principal violist on the national tour of Sondheim’s Into the Woods.
As a videographer and editor, he has created, produced, and/or appeared in educational video projects for The Santa Fe Opera, the Albuquerque Museum of Art and History, and the ArtWorks program.
Oliver’s unique presentations, performances, and workshops have helped thousands of music lovers, community musicians, students, teachers and museum patrons deepen their appreciation and enjoyment of music and the arts.
Photo credits, from top: Oliver Prezant, photo by Ruthanne Greeley. Oliver Prezant with Santa Fe Opera 2023 Season Poster, photo by Ruthanne Greeley. Oliver Prezant conducting from painting, still from video by Jonathan Lowe, featuring artwork by Mary Vernon: Wall With Mirror, 2022. Oliver Prezant giving a workshop, photo by Kacy Crews. Practicing Performing workshop, photo by Oliver Prezant. Oliver Prezant conducting, still from video by Jonathan Lowe. Improvising musicians Jerry Weimer, Carla Kountoupes, and Katie Harlow with Oliver Prezant at Strata Gallery, with artwork by Cassandra Black, by permission of the photographer. Prelude Talk at The Santa Fe Opera, photo by Ruthanne Greeley. Footer: Prelude Talk at The Santa Fe Opera, photo by Ruthane Greeley.